This paper analyzes the effects of color quantization on standard JPEG compression. Optimized color palettes were used to quantize natural images, using dithering and chroma subsampling as optional. The resulting variations on file size and quantitative quality measures were analyzed. Preliminary results, using a small image database, show that file size suffered an average 20% increase and a concomitant loss in quality was perceived ([Formula: see text]6dB PSNR, [Formula: see text]0.16 SSIM and [Formula: see text]9.6 Butteraugli). Color quantization present itself as an ineffective tool on JPEG compression but if necessarily imposed, on high quality compressed images, it might lead to a negligible increase in data size and quality loss. In addition dithering seems to always decrease JPEG compression ratio.
Evaluation of quality measures for color quantization
